Posted on 06/22/2006 4:11:12 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
At its conference this August, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will make a decision that could see Pluto lose its status as a planet.
For the first time, the organisation will be officially defining the word "planet", and it is causing much debate in the world of astronomy.
There is only one thing that everyone seems to agree on: there are no longer nine planets in the Solar System.
The debate has been brought to a head by the discovery of a potential 10th planet, temporarily named 2003 UB313 in January 2005. This new candidate planet is bigger than Pluto.
The question now facing the IAU is whether to make this new discovery a planet.
Pluto is an unusual planet as it is made predominantly of ice and is smaller even than the Earth's Moon.
There is a group of astronomers that are arguing for an eight-planet SolarSystem, with neither Pluto or 2003 UB313 making the grade as a planet; but a number of astronomers are arguing for a more specific definition of a planet.
One of these; Kuiper Belt researcher Dr Marc Buie, of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, has come up with a clear planetary definition he would like to see the IAU adopt.
I believe the definition of planet should be as simple as possible, so I've come up with two criteria," he said.
"One is that it can't be big enough to burn its own matter - that's what a star does. On the small end, I think the boundary between a planet and not a planet should be, is the gravity of the object stronger than the strength of the material of the object? That's a fancy way of saying is it round?"
This definition could lead to our Solar System having as many as 20 planets, including Pluto, 2003 UB313, and many objects that were previously classified as moons or asteroids.
One possible resolution to the debate is for new categories of planet to be introduced. Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars would be "rocky planets". The gas-giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be a second category.
Whatever the outcome of this debate there is only one thing that we can be certain of; by September 2006 there will no longer be just nine planets in our Solar System.
And RAM. And disk. And GHz. And bandwidth. And Pixels.
Sheesh! You're right, but there's a character limit on the tagline! ;o)
Can we throw Kerry out of the Solar System?
From the origin of the word, even more so.
Some small stars orbit a larger star or stars, and yet they are stars rather than planets. The currently closest star which isn't the Sun to Earth, Proxima is a small star orbiting two larger stars who have a sort of insular binary system between them.
"Planet X" has it all: mystery, science and it's the Roman numeral for 10, and planets all have Roman names anyway.
Of course, according to ALF, the universe already named it Dave. Or it might've been Alvin.
TS
According to the 1966 episode, "cybermen were from Earths twin planet, Mondas, which evolved along similar lines to our world but drifted away from us and into deep space millennia ago."
Only because we don't use the Greek names in English. Then they'd be; Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus, Cronos, Ouranos, Poseidon and Hades.
What!?
TS
(And then instead of all the clip art of Pluto(tm), we'd have clip are of Chia Pets.)
When I was a boy, I remember dinosaurs called "Brontosauruses." Palentologists apparently got bored and renamed them, as I recall. You don't hear so much about brontosauruses any more. Pluto must be undergoing the same wrath. It's job security for astronomers, I suppose.
Uranus is gaseous?
Pluto's an undocumented planet. Just doing the rotating around the Sun that our Solar System other planets won't do.
How'd they explain how the people didn't freeze as they drifted away from the Sun in the storyline?
Hey, Pluto! Don't let the door hit Uranus on the way out!
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